Time for Touch a Truck

Last year was our first time attending this event and we knew we would be returning. Claxton is still into police cars, big trucks of any kind, and of course fire engines as much or more than he's ever been. I'm thinking he'll probably carry this passion with him for a very long time. Based on last year's experience, we knew it would be best to arrive when it opened to avoid most of the crowd so that the kids could spend a little more time on each truck checking out all of the bells and whistles (aka - buttons to press, knobs to turn, etc). There were all kinds of vehicles to explore - police cars, fire engines, school bus, UPS truck, semi trucks, trolley, and more.

Julia is old enough this year to enjoy it as well. She was quite amused with all the activity and things to see and by the way, not at all phased by the loud horns and sirens. Her favorite part was seeing a police dog (she has recently learned what a dog says and demonstrates at every chance she gets).

His favorite - driving a fire engine

Everybody has to take a turn running in the back of a semi...

Claxton and Julia waving to their fans from the big yellow school bus

Vroom, vroom!!
(This is for Unlce Brad)

Just a little too loud

He'll be cutting the grass for us real soon

Look closely at Julia's face -she had just seen the police dog

Conversations this morning

As we are getting ready for the day:
Claxton: "Dad, what's the plan?"
Dad: "I don't know."
Claxton: "Oh."

During breakfast:
Dad: "Claxton, ask Mommy what you asked me upstairs."
Claxton: "Mommy, what's the plan?"
Me: "The plan for what?"
Claxton: (no answer)

Riding in the car:
Claxton: "Dad, Dad what's the deal?"
Dad: "I don't know. You tell me what the deal is."
Claxton (with great confidence): "Oh, ok. Well, first we are going to church. Then we are going to eat at Chic-fil-A. That's the deal, Daddy."
Dad (laughing heartily): "Well, we are going to church. But Chic-fil-A is not open on Sunday."
Claxton: "Yes it is."
(Then we actually passed one and it was indeed closed.)
Dad: "See, they are not open, it's not even an option."
Claxton (pointing out the window): "Well, that restaurant is open, so maybe we can eat there."
Dad: "Maybe."

I'm glad to know we have another planner in the family!

If at first you don't succeed...try, try again

Claxton was playing out in the backyard for a while this morning. He was continuously moving from one point of interest to another in a matter of minutes. i was in the family room with Julia all the while keeping a close eye on him and his activities. There is a trapeze bar on the play set, but he is still too short to reach it. I looked out and saw him reaching for the bar...and then falling to the ground. Then he would get up and try again and again and again. He figured out that he could stand on the frame of the base of the play set, then stretch to reach the bar. And after many attempts he finally did. Hang time was only about 1.5 seconds, but he did it!! And then it was on to the next challenge.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

We have been trying and trying to read books to Julia on a regular basis for sometime with little to no success. This is a different experience than what we had with Claxton. In the past two to three weeks, she has basically gone from no interest to total interest. Quite amazing. The other day, she spent about ten minutes or so on the floor by herself flipping through the pages of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?". And now, she even enjoys lying on the couch with Daddy and Claxton to read. It's thrilling that she has finally started to gain a interest in reading.

What we've been up to

Playing outside, going to Chic-fil-A, going to the park, and riding in the car. This has basically been our life for the past week and a half. Literally. Why? Because we are finally doing a few things around our house that we've wanted to do since we moved in three years ago. You all know that we like color on our walls, so the monochromatic khaki walls are history (at least downstairs). Painters were here last week and we are having some minor repairs done on the floors this week. Which has turned out to be a good thing because we found a leak that we were told had been repaired when we bought the house, but in fact was not. Thus creating more work for Brian this week than he really has time for. And I almost forgot to mention that the track lighting in our kitchen is gone. Hallelujah! I am not a fan of track lights. And that too was a good thing because in the process we found a live wire laying in the ceiling. Our electrician friend pondered how the house had not burned down. With all this activity I knew it would be best to get the kids out of the house...the truth is out of the way so the work could get done in a timely fashion. It sort of feels like we just moved in because stuff is everywhere. This part is driving us all crazy, but it will all be done in just a few more days and we can get back to some normalcy around here with happy colors on our walls. So if you want to see our new colors, come on over for a visit!

Uh-oh

I walked in to get Julia up from her nap to find her paci and animals all in a pile on the floor. She just looked up at me then down at the pile and kept saying "uh-oh, uh-oh" in a very soft, innocent manner. Guess she knows more than we had been giving her credit for. Let the games begin!

Amy, this is for you...

I know you told me that we should take pictures of Julia in the green bucket and I keep forgetting to do it. Well, it was on the floor and I needed to contain her for about five minutes or so. So I set her in it with a couple of toys. When I went to get her out I noticed just how adorable she looked. So of course I quickly found the camera.

Just a swingin'

These two just love to swing, and the higher the better, for both of them. I have to admit, it was one of my favorite things to do as a kid, in fact, I still enjoy swinging. But I don't think I was as brave as either one of my kids are at their ages. Claxton will probably be one of those kids who figures out how to swing all the way around one day. Lord help me!

Train them early

We believe in training our kids at a young age to pitch in and help out with household chores. Julia's first assignment is to unload the dishwasher.

Dreamland

We have been asking Claxton for some time what he dreamed at night. Normally, he looks around and "sees" what he dreamt about - a toy, Daddy, Mommy, Julia, etc. And normally every morning we wake to screaming from the other end of the house "Here I am Daddy. MOMMY, HERE I AM." This signifies it's time to get Claxton up.

This morning was different. There was no screaming, so I figured Claxton was still sleeping. But since we had swimming lessons today, I went into to get him up. He was not sleeping as I expected. In fact, he was standing in the corner of his crib looking at me very sad.

"Daddy?"
"Yes Claxton."
"Daddy?"
"What Claxton?"
"Daddy."
"What is it Claxton, what's wrong?"
"My swing set. It's broken. Bentley {one of his best friends in the world} broke my swing set."
"When did that happen?"
"Last night. While it was dark. Daddy can you fix it? My swing set is broken. Bentley broke it."
"Claxton, Bentley didn't break your swing set. He wouldn't do that."

I quickly picked him up and took him into the guest bedroom. I opened the shutters and told him to look at the swing set, it's not broken. A smile came across his face... and then quickly disappeared. A look of confusion then appeared.

"But he broke it. The ladder. He broke my swing set."
"Claxton, it was only a dream. It wasn't real. It was like when you pretend."

Claxton remained perplexed all day, trying to reconcile the situation. But one thing is for sure Claxton just had his first dream - first that he remembered anyway.

You can tell it's March

Typical spring weather in our neck of the woods. A few days ago we had on shorts and t-shirts and today we had to bundle up when we went out. Right now it's cold, windy and snow flurries have been falling off and on all day. My entire household is ready for spring to be here permanently.

Easter Weekend

A busy few days

Whew!! It's been a busy few days around here. Over the weekend we have been to three Easter Egg Hunts of which one was combined with a birthday party, and yes we had one in our own backyard and it counts. We, or more accurately, Brian, assembled an airplane. Claxton and I dyed Easter eggs along with a little help from Dad. Went to church this morning and played outside with the kids today (even though a little windy) for quite a while. We tried to get some photos of the kids dressed up this morning, but let's just say they were a little less than cooperative. Maybe next year.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow of our weekend. In the meantime, here's a conversation in the car on the way home from church this morning:

Me (looking at the craft he made): This is nice Claxton. What is the round brown thing?
Claxton: It's a stone. It rolled away.
Me: Rolled away from where?
Claxton: The door to the cave.
Me: What cave?
Claxton: That's where Jesus was.
Me: Where is he now?
Claxton: Mommy, he's looking for stones.
Me: Are you sure?
Claxton: Yeah, he's looking for stones.

I'm just assuming that he got restless before they finished the end of the story so he missed it, or he got sidetracked when they got to the part about the stone and his little boyish mind began thinking about how much fun it would be searching for stones. In any event, seems we will have to keep working on theology a bit.

Happy Easter!

From us to you, wishing you a Happy Easter

Be careful what you dream for

We all know the phrase "be careful what you ask for - you might get it." Well, in this case it could be said "be careful what you dream for - you might get it." My husband has the dream of building an airplane in his garage. That dream came true last night. Something tells me not exactly what he had in mind!

So, not exactly your dream, but your children will be very appreciative for years to come.

And today, we have one very excited little boy.

Time to put the gates up

It has been wonderful not having to go through gates in all the door ways for a while now. But, the time has come again for them to go back up. She is unbelievably fast.

Jumping like Jonah

The "Cars" movie and "Jonah" a Veggie Tales movie are by far Claxton's favorites. There's hardly a day that passes that either one or both don't get mentioned at some point. It seems as though whatever we are doing, he can find a way to bring it into relation to one of those two movies. It's really amazing.

Ever since grandparent's arrived this week, Claxton has been telling them that when he goes to swim lessons he jumps in like Jonah. They probably heard this a thousand times this week. Well, this morning, he finally got to show them that he can really jump like Jonah!

Thanks Ron for sharing these photos.

Adult time

At night after the kids are in bed, we've been playing Wii. We even convinced Grandma D to play and created her very own Mii. I hate to admit this, but we did not capture any photos of Grandma D actually playing. For those who know her, well, it should come as no surprise that she got the hang of it right away. I wouldn't want to embarrass anyone or anything, so I'll just report that she did very well bowling...

On another night, these three were at it. You can just tell there's no competition going on here...

Julia's 1st Birthday Party

Today we celebrated Julia's birthday and had a small, but fun party for her. I could go on and on and on about what a sweet blessing she is to our family, but those of you reading this already know that to be the case. We, including Claxton, just adore her tremendously and are thankful for the joy she has brought to us. Yes, including that squealing stage!

As appropriate for our family, her first birthday cake was a monkey, a very cute monkey. Hats off to Brian for outdoing himself yet again.

Grammy and Julia ready for the party.

Time to sing Happy Birthday!

Yummy, this is good!

Cake and presents...birthdays are fun!!

I'll stop opening presents for a moment and pose for the paparrazis.

Thanks Miss Amy for keeping my brother occupied while I open my presents

Grandma D, I made you a cake in my new kitchen

Ellie, would you like to ride?

Here I am on my new airplane and someone else wants a turn too...

We had tornadoes that touched down in the city not too far from us here today. So right in the middle of the party, we had the local news on to follow what was happening. At one point our neighborhood was even mentioned on the news and of course this was at the same time we were ready to cut the cake. Here's half the crew getting ready to make a mad dash for the basement if needed. Thankfully, it never came to that.

Growth charts

We took Julia for her one-year checkup and she is doing just great. After we got home, I decided to take a look at Claxton's records and compare their growth during their first year. In a nutshell, they both entered the world rather small. Claxton took forever to eat, but Julia had no problems getting the hang of it. She really packed on the pounds the first four months, then begin to taper off quite significantly. But by her first birthday, she weighs 4 pounds less than Claxton did at his first birthday. Interestingly enough, since she has been eating table food she once again eats more than Claxton. When she's hungry we cannot get food in front of her fast enough. At her current rate of food intake, she might just surpass Claxton again. We won't be surprised if our doctor tells us to put her on a diet at her 15-month check-up. Currently she's only in the 15th percentile. A dainty little one.

Claxton:
Birth weight - 6 lb, 13 oz., height - 19 1/2 in.
Five days old - 6 lb, 8 oz., height 19 3/4 in.
One month old - 7 lb, 13 oz., height 20 1/2 in.
Two months old - 9 lb, 10 oz., height 22 1/4 in.
Four months old - 13 lb 6 1/4 oz., height 24 1/2 in.
Six months old - 16 lb, 15 1/4 oz., height 26 in.
Nine months old - 17 lb, 5 oz., height 27 1/2 in.
Twelve months old - 21 lb, 10 oz., height 29 in.

Julia:
Birth weight - 5 lb, 14 oz., height 18 in.
Four days old - 5 lb, 10 3/4 oz., height 18 1/2 in.
One month old - 8 lb, 4 1/2 oz, height 21 in.
Two months old - 11 lb, 2 oz., height 22 in.
Four months old - 14 lb, 3 oz., height 24 1/2 in.
Six months old - 15 lb, 2 1/2 oz., height 25 1/2 in.
Nine months old - 16 lb, 8 1/2 oz., height 26 1/2 in.
Twelve months old - 17 lb, 1 oz., height 28 in.